Echoes of Us (6 page)

Outside, the wind tore through our jacket. Hally wasn’t even wearing one, and Ryan wrapped his around her shoulders as we hurried away from the arcade.

“Where are the others?” he said. He must have caught her glances toward the door, too.

We rounded the corner before Hally could answer. Kitty and Dr. Lyanne stared at us, pale-faced.

“Where are Jaime and Peter?” Dr. Lyanne demanded. And grew even paler when neither Ryan nor I replied. The looks in our eyes were answer enough.

The sun went down early, with November encroaching. By the time Marion pulled up to her hotel, it was dusk. The different buildings were separate, and stood alone, so at least we didn’t have to pass a front desk.

To Marion’s credit, she hadn’t batted an eye when Ryan and I showed up again, hours after we’d left, with three new people tagging behind.

Wendy ran up as soon as Marion opened the hotel-room door.

“Can you find some food for everyone?” Marion said, and the girl nodded. I was about to follow the others inside when I realized Dr. Lyanne had lagged behind, one slim hand pressed against the side of a dark red truck like she needed it there to prop herself up.

I motioned for Ryan to go on in. He nodded, closing the door after him.

Dr. Lyanne glanced up when Addie and I were a few feet away. Her eyes, which could usually skewer with a look, were unfocused.

I asked Addie.

she replied. And it was the truth.

“Go inside, Eva,” Dr. Lyanne said, watching us approach. “The last thing we need is for you to get sick.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Paltry words. But all I had. “About Peter.”

I realized, suddenly, all the things I didn’t know about Peter. About Warren, his other soul, who we’d never even addressed by name. What had they wanted to do with their lives, if there wasn’t the resistance to be thinking about? What would they have done when all this was over?

Were they scared, when they died? Did they regret the choices they’d made, that had led them to that spot, at that moment?

Had Peter and Warren had any room in their minds, during those last seconds, for anything but a blaze of pain?

Had they realized they were dying?

Had they had time to make peace with it?

Had they had time to tell each other good-bye?

“If I do what Marion wants,” I said softly, “then we might be able to bargain for Jaime’s—”

“No, Eva,” Dr. Lyanne said. Her voice was stony.

“We might be able to bargain for his return,” I said over her. “Or kick up such a fuss that they won’t be able to hurt him—”

“Eva,” she snapped. Her eyes strayed heavenward. Her voice wavered. “Give me a moment before you start on another one of your harebrained ideas.”

“Please,” I said. “I want to help.”

Dr. Lyanne looked back at us. The momentary vulnerability in her eyes had disappeared. “Peter had other plans.” She laughed at the look on our face. “You think he didn’t have contingency plans for if something happened to him?”

“I—I thought we were supposed to just call the closest contact.”

Dr. Lyanne rubbed her fingers over her forehead. Lowered them over her eyes. “Not with the way things are headed. Things are getting worse here, Eva. If anything happened to Peter . . .” She took a sharp breath. Sighed. “He wanted us all on the next flight out.”

“Out?” I echoed.

“Overseas.”

Addie’s shock jolted through me, as well. Combined forces with my own. I stumbled over my thoughts. “All of us?”

“You, Jaime, the Mullans, Kitty, Emalia . . . me. Henri would use his contacts.”

“Henri’s—”

“He left you his phone, didn’t he?” Dr. Lyanne said. Automatically, our hands went to our purse. Held it protectively. We’d told her how it had broken in the crash. “Although, God knows if he’s okay himself right now. We’ll have to wait until we get the thing fixed, then call and hope.”

I said softly. The word echoed in my mind, bringing with it the memories of Henri’s stories. The promise of peace. Of safety.

Addie said.

Dr. Lyanne pushed away from the truck. She’d gathered herself, a regality seeping back into the set of her shoulders. “I know this sitting around, this hiding, is driving you crazy, Eva. But—”

I interrupted her. “Back at your house . . . back in Anchoit. You told me to clean up my mess. Those were your exact words. I can’t leave before I do that.”

We stared at each other a long, long time.

“Let Addie and me do this,” I whispered. “We’d never be able to live with ourself otherwise. You know that.”

We—
I—
had to make amends. By taking Darcie Grey’s place in an institution, we would free Jackson and Vince. We might aid in Emalia and Sophie’s rescue as well. Might help Jaime.

And Addie—Addie wanted to do this.

Dr. Lyanne sighed. “You’re too trusting, Eva Tamsyn. It’ll hurt you one day.”

I hesitated. I didn’t know how to reply to that.

The horizon gulped up the last dredges of sunlight, leaving us in darkness. Dr. Lyanne shook her head. “My God, Eva. The things you get yourself into.”

T
he others were eating sandwiches and apples on the motel-room beds when Dr. Lyanne opened the door. Ryan set aside his food, grabbed his jacket, and joined me outside without my needing to say a word.

We drifted toward the edge of the motel property, then stopped at the side of a grassy embankment. Other than the sound of far-off traffic, the world was silent and lonely.

I knew what Ryan wanted, but I wasn’t sure if he would ask. In the end, he didn’t have to. Addie knew him—and us—well enough now.

she said.

She meant going under. That was what we’d come to call the act of temporarily disappearing from our body. It was a way of losing consciousness, like sleeping. But a sleep filled with intense, dreamlike memories. Or sometimes intense, memorylike dreams.

Whether they were memories or dreams, happy or sad, they held a strange sort of peace. And they robbed you of reality. Sometimes it was a price. Sometimes, a gift.

Addie said and disappeared.

“She’s gone,” I said, to Ryan and to the night.

He drew me down with him. We lay on our backs, staring at the thick, dark-underbellied clouds. “You’re thinking about going along with Marion’s plan,” he said.

I didn’t ask how he knew. Maybe I was an easy read. Maybe he just knew me well enough now to be able to guess where my mind wandered.

Ryan rolled over to face me. Waited until I turned to look at him. There was a bit of grass stuck in his dark hair. “You’re not going to help anyone by getting caught yourself. This isn’t even
maybe I might get caught
. This is walking into prison and praying for a prison break.”

“It might help,” I said. “Not just directly, with Jackson. What Marion is saying about the footage. It could really make a difference.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.”

“The bombing of Powatt was different,” I whispered. “This wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Except you,” Ryan said. “And Addie.”

I sat up. “That’s our risk to take. They’ve taken Jaime. They’ve . . . they’ve killed Peter. God knows where Henri and Emalia are—”

“Exactly.” Ryan sat up, too, his voice rising. “We’ve already lost so many people. We can’t lose you.”

My voice softened. “I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ll be fine,” I repeated. Then again. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to fix this.”

“It’s not your job to fix this,” Ryan said, and there was a roughness in his voice born of frustration. Or maybe fear.

But it was. Deep down, I knew it was. I’d been the one who first fell into Sabine’s plans. Who never told Peter, and convinced Hally and Lissa to keep quiet. I was the one who insisted on going back to the attic after Lankster Square. The chaos at Lankster Square should have been a warning. I hadn’t listened.

Once upon a time, I’d been nothing more than a ghost. No will of my own. No responsibility. No actions, and so no consequences. I’d thought I’d known who I was: the one who reminded Addie not to forget things, the one who noticed things she missed, the one who took care of things when she was too flustered to do so. But then I’d regained the ability to make my own decisions, not just influence hers. And that had changed me.

Little by little, bit by bit. I’d become someone who could be tricked into murder.

And that realization had left me cold.

I could not be that person.

I reached into my purse. I was looking for Henri’s phone, but when I drew it out, the photograph of Darcie Grey came with it. Ryan picked it up before I could. Glanced at the photo, too, then at my face. “She doesn’t even look that much like you.” His voice was edged. Bitter.

“She does,” I said gently. “Look, we have the same—”

The sudden, urgent force of his kiss blew out every other sensation, like a photograph taken under too much light. He pulled me to him. The picture crumpled in his hand. The edges of it pressed against my flushed skin.

I sank into the warmth of his body. The drift of his lips to the hollow just under my jaw, where my heartbeat fluttered.

“Don’t do it, Eva,” Ryan said. And I didn’t want to, but I pulled away. The moonlight caught those ridiculous, long eyelashes of his. “Don’t go in there alone.”

Alone.

Ryan had always followed me. He’d followed me back up the stairs our last night at Nornand, when I’d insisted on checking on the other kids. He’d followed me to our first meeting with Sabine and the others in their attic, had followed me back when we returned after the fireworks at Lankster Square. He’d followed me to Powatt, despite my best efforts. Now I was going somewhere he couldn’t follow, no matter how stubborn he was about it. So he was asking me to stay. To not take that step.

But I couldn’t.

“I have to, Ryan,” I said.

Ryan and I stayed outside a little longer after that, but there was a new coldness between us that had nothing to do with the night air. Finally, he stood. Said, “Come on. You look like you’re going to freeze.”

Once we were back in the motel room, he joined his sister in the corner of the room. I headed for Marion. She stood by the trash can, paring an apple in one long, continuous peel.

“How will you get me out?” I said. “After we have the footage?”

Marion gave no indication of surprise, answering as easily as if we’d been talking about her plans the entire time. “I’ve been a reporter for a long while now. I have government credentials, and contacts in all the right places. I can’t promise it’ll be the world’s neatest rescue, but if you have the right kind of ID, know the right people, it makes it easier to go where you want to go.” She set down her pocketknife. “I’ve already figured out a way for you to send a signal. The security breach the institution suffered last summer means they’re strict about the caretakers they hire, but they’re a lot more lax about people who don’t have contact with the patients: their manual laborers and—”

I went cold. “Wait. The institution—it isn’t—”

“Hahns,” Marion said.

Hahns was an institution in the mountains, far up in the north. The one Peter had tried to break into with the help of a woman named Diane, who’d been seeded as a caretaker. Things had fallen apart. The rescue attempt had failed, costing the woman, along with two children, their lives.

The breakout had been planned for summer due to the harsh conditions around the institution when it grew colder. And now, Addie and I were scheduled to go in right as winter approached.

Marion must have seen the look on my face. “As soon as you get enough footage, I’ll get you out of there,” she promised. “It won’t be more than a few weeks.”

Addie and I had only been in Nornand for a single week. It had been long enough.

“You’ll make sure Jackson’s freed,” I said.

“I will. And once we have the footage—”

“We might be able to use it as a bargaining chip for Jaime,” I said. “I know.”

“Jaime’s thirteen years old,” Marion said. “And he’s their proof of the possibility of a cure. They won’t mistreat him.”

My laughter was a stark, dry thing. Like a thunderclap. “You and I have very different ideas of what it means to mistreat someone.”

She looked away, back to the half-peeled apple in her hands. The peel spiraled down, a red coil.

“I’ll do it,” I said quietly.